The present invention came about as a recognition that, in creative play, children and adults often engage in role playing. Prior art puppets, dolls, and stuffed toys often represent a fixed character which requires changes to be either wholly imagined or considerable effort to be expended to change the visual, physical, and operational characteristics. This applies to all types of puppets, dolls, and stuffed toys, including the various forms of hand puppets and marionettes.
Many puppets and dolls exist that allow the user to reconfigure them through changes of clothing or the addition of accessories. Some even allow the change of some facial feature elements. However, none has provided the ability to totally configure every aspect of the character including features, limbs, accessories, clothing and control elements. Additionally, this arrangement allows conversion between doll, hand puppet, and marionette through the addition of control elements to further enhance the role playing and educational characteristics.
Bearing in mind, these and other deficiencies in the prior art, it is therefore an object of this invention to provide the individual engaged in creative play with a means to universally configure a puppet character and related control elements to meet the users role playing requirements.
An equally important purpose is to allow the user to easily reconfigure the puppet in a non-destructive manner for further creative play through the provision of modular items attachable to the base body and each other.
It is a further object of the present invention to construct the puppet out of materials that allow the various parts to adhere to one another when in use and be separated easily and non-destructively.
A further purpose is to provide a universal intermediate connection means of attachment to affix various elements to one another. One such means is the use of an intermediate fastener constructed of a hook type material permanently fastened in a back configuration.
It is a further object to provide parts such as cheeks, nose, eyes, hair, arms, legs, clothing, and accessories with loop or hook type material permanently attached to the part so that it may be easily located and attached anywhere on the body and head which is fabricated from the opposing loop or hook type materials or to another receptive part.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an articulating and hingeable interfacing attachment means that will allow a high degree of mobility between the interfacing parts.
It is a further object to provide control elements such as strings, rods and other such elements as may be obvious to those skilled in the art which attach to either the articulate or hingeable items or are affixed directly to the surface of the element under control to facilitate movement or support.